Great news! Randy Smith, project director of Thief 3, has replied to some of the questions the TTLG staff sent to him. Dig it:

How will difficulty levels be handled?

Randy: There will be a variety of difficulty levels, like in Thief and Thief 2. You can take the game's presets, or you can go in and adjust the difficulty parameters yourself to some custom setting of your own choosing. You can be as crazy with this as you want, pretty much. We were thinking of our fans on TTLG when we developed this, actually - you can use this feature to play Lytha style, or any other play style you want, and the game will track your success or failure!

Will the player ever be required to kill in order to finish a mission? Conversely, will it be possible to play the game by killing everyone you meet?

Randy: You can finish this game without ever getting caught, and you can finish this game by killing everyone you meet. Okay, that last part isn't strictly true in every single case, maybe, but I can't go into details. Let's adjust to say you can kill practically everybody you meet, if that's your thing, you sick, violent Garrett, you.

Which leads to... How much has the game changed from the original Thief 3 design that Looking Glass had planned?

Randy: This is a very authentic sequel to Thief and Thief 2, and it follows very much in the footsteps laid out for the triology at Looking Glass.

Is the mantling going to be like it is in Unreal 2? Or will it be anything reminiscent of the mantling we're used to from Thief/Thief II... where you really feel like you are pulling yourself up?

Randy: The mantling in this Thief is more like that in T/T2. We started with Unreal code, but we've revised everything that needed revision to make this the game it needed to be.

Is Garrett going to suffer munchkin-ization like most player-avatars in many previous UT/Unreal engine based first-person games?

Randy: No. naturally, our game will be perfect in every conceivable way.

Will highlighted objects retain the rather strong rainbow-effect glow seen in the shakeycam footage?

Randy: That was a placeholder special effect. We're working on its replacement now.

Will models be hand animated or motion captured?

Randy: We do some of both, depending on the circumstance and what's going to look good.

Any possibility of seeing some newer screenshots of the models to put an end to the current cries that they look like Mr Mackey from South Park?

Randy: We will definitely have more presence in the press eventually. stay tuned for more Thief articles, exclusives, websites, media, and stuff like that. You'll see our updated character models then.

Even if the title cannot yet be revealed, could we get an official statement to the effect that the tagline of the teaser trailer "All that is yours shall soon be mine" is not the actual name of the game. I know this one sounds a bit silly, but there are those people who are acting like this will be the case.

Randy: I hereby officially declare that the actual name of the game is not "All that is yours shall soon be mine". I'd never even heard those words until I went to E3 this year.

How will the wall climbing equipment work, and who's crazy idea was it?

Randy: I can't remember whose idea it was, but it was a super good idea. It's one of the many things that makes this such a good game, even now before it's finished! Just wait til you get to try it yourself, you'll see. We all think it's great fun.